Topology, Properties and Thermodynamics of Amorphous Carbon

Abstract

Amorphous carbon (a-C) in solid state is a rather big family of carbon materials with many types of short-range and medium-range orders (SRO and MRO). From thermodynamic point of view any a-C is a non-ergodic and non-equilibrium system. The diffusional structure relaxation time in graphite and diamond at T < 103 K is huge because the activation energy of this process is estimated to be larger than 7 eV. In a-C the structure relaxation processes are also very slow at those temperatures. Therefore many forms of a-C are rather stable to be used and investigated.